PERFORMER’S UNCOMMON, GENTLE NATURE IS NO ACT

“Western Gunsmoke Hee Haw”

Narrator: Once there was a swinging bar named Gunsmoke Texas. It is a hot smokey country western café.

SCENE ONE

Announcer: We have a new showgirl and she is going to dance with the sheriff right now and they have been practicing a lot so we will likely their taping hit it guys!

Music: Broadway in goerge m coann

Deputy: You guy and doll you are sooo good! How did you do that? That was sooo hard to do.

Sheriff: I have been practicing since I was 10 year.

Jennifer: Me too. I was 14 years old when I was started. My father teach me how. He was a dancer too.

Morzart: Suddenly, Black Bart came just on time.

Black: I hear music in this bar!

Well, sheriff I came at last anyway I want Jennifer back anyway I want her. (He grab her for no reason.)

Sheriff: No you may not have her. She is my partner and my deputy is her husband!

Black: Oh OK. She’s yours! (He pushed her to him.)

Jennifer: Oh thank you sheriff! You save me!

Music: Mind your own bussiness

Black: Oh OK. I’m leaving, but I have a new partner and she’s mine.

Narrator: The news had been spread all over the county. The sheriff against Black Bart over the dance contest.

(Now Black Bart came first

to dance the crowd booed

him.)

Music: setting the woods on fire

After that the sheriff and jennifer come on

MUSIC: Rock around the clock ...

Announcer: OK. That was wonderful! Thank you very much. Let’s see who is going to be the winner. The envelope please. Thank you Kirstina. The winner is the Texas Tappers. (They clapped and hollered.)

Sheriff: Well, Black Bart. I won again. Now I can arrest you again and you won’t escaped from me again! (He handcuffed him and shoved him.)

THE END

One thing quickly apparent about actress-playwright Rachel Goldbaum is that she has the sweet nature that is the fond hope of every parent for every daughter.

She’s kind, tells the truth without fail and will always cry over your pain. For a grown woman, she’s wide-eyed and has the enthusiasm of a teenager.

I gush, but the woman is unique.

As I write, this is the day Rachel takes the stage in San Diego to perform the lead role of Maria in “The Sound of Music.” Her love of performing draws in the audience and makes unimportant her lack of an ideal stage presence. She’s not tall and — typical for an actress — admits to being a little heavier than she’d like.

Also, Rachel says, “Sometimes I miss a cue and sometimes I miss a line. And sometimes I get a little confused.”

But she has rehearsed and is ready, shows no stage fright and is confident that her ability will result in a bravura performance. She feels at home on the stage. “I love the theater. It’s my thing.”

•••

As Rachel finishes the title song, the audience approval is strong, and she responds with a glorious smile. It’s not the first time she’s heard applause, but she soaks it right up. Her diverse stage repertoire ranges from melodrama to comedy. In her first sign of ego, she candidly says, “I have talent.”

However, shortly after her performance, tears stream down her face.

“Why are you crying?” I ask.

“I was thinking of a friend, a girl who got killed.”

It hasn’t been easy for Rachel. Her circumstances made getting through high school a struggle, but she graduated. She has worked hard: washed dishes in a restaurant, made beds in a motel and performed the lowest tasks in a mail room, all for minimum wage. She wants to stay busy and earn her keep, though her upper-middle-class family in La Jolla doesn’t require it of her. She’s got her pride.

Society classifies Rachel as disabled. She knows of the word “retarded.” Neither affects her sense of self. She acknowledges being born with Down syndrome, but it doesn’t trouble her. It’s a bigger deal to us than to her.

Rachel is a small woman of 38, and has all the recognizable physical characteristics: She’s four-foot-eight and too pudgy, as she would agree. You would not mistake her face. Her speech has a soft, singsong cadence, and her words are spoken painstakingly, avoiding contractions and spaced apart, as though building blocks placed in a row to form a thought.

The venue in which this artist performed her “Sound of Music” song is the STARS Program at the North Park Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe in San Diego. It’s a tiny storefront theater with 35 seats that serves the disabled by providing opportunity for creative expression. To them, it’s the Old Globe.

Rachel has a longtime boyfriend with whom she never quarrels — Matthew, 39, who also has Down syndrome. In fairness, she tends to call the shots most of the time, but that’s because Matthew is a natural go-along guy. They go to Padres games together, without supervision, and have taken ballroom dance lessons.

What sets Rachel apart from most of us is the extent of tenderness she feels for all who suffer from violence, from heartbreak, from sadness. Her tears flowed after 9/11, and they dampened her eyes when she discussed the catastrophe in Newtown, Conn. Because she retains little memory of crime or hate, each deadly occurrence in the news shocks her anew.

For every tragedy that happens, “I cry. Sometimes I don’t feel so good because I cry so hard.” And, she adds, “When a person dies, it breaks my heart.”

When a young neighbor was killed in an auto crash, she appealed to God on his behalf:

Dear God,

Please help Jeremy up there. Please is the only way. And he was a best friend with my brothers and my family and his families too. We share his memories for beautiful things and having fun with him a lot. Please God help him his good ways and families and friends. He died in 17 yrs. old. That is to young to die. We felt sorry very sorry. ...

Thank you.

Rachel is a child of a Christian-Jewish marriage, but that isn’t an issue to her. She is a Catholic but can celebrate Passover with the same joy as Christmas.

•••

She is quite aware that this can be a mean world, and that those of her condition are not immune.

“People with Down syndrome have feelings, just like you do,” she says. “We get embarrassed and feel bad if we think people are laughing at us. Most important to remember is that we like to do all the same things as you do.”

She loves to shop, especially at Hallmark, where the expensive cards and gifts would cha-ching their way into her shopping bag as though in the 99-cent store. To her, it truly is “only money.”

Her thought patterns go step-by-step in a straight line. When ideas start to make sharp turns or sweep around curves, she easily gets lost. She would agree she has a low threshold for complexity. To her, all math is Einsteinian. However, she is quite capable of surprise by springing observations that can laser a beam onto the truth.

Brenda Goldbaum, her mother, says working outside the home is important for Rachel to strengthen self-worth and social skills. When Rachel first started, she did jobs that some might call menial but she found rewarding. She now performs basic office tasks a couple of days a week.

It is a matter of pride to Rachel to do things on her own. She can take a city bus, transfer twice and then get to her destination on the trolley — on time.

(To me, that sounds scary. If you asked me to go down to the corner bus stop and ride to downtown San Diego, I’d end up on a Greyhound in Yuma, Ariz.)

San Diego Park & Recreation offers the “therapeutic recreation services” program, which sponsors dances, picnics and theme-park outings for people such as Rachel. They also sponsor an annual gambling excursion to Laughlin, Nev.

Brenda says her daughter enjoys the gambling, and she gives Rachel three envelopes of money: one for food, one for souvenirs and one with about $60 for gambling.

It upsets Rachel when people around her quarrel. Her word for discord is “drama.”

“I do not like drama,” she says. “It makes me sad when other people get hurt feelings. It’s not right to treat people bad. I tell people, ‘Don’t do that. Do not do drama.’ ”

One thing that might push Rachel close to irritation is when the family goes to a restaurant and “they think that I am a kid. They give me a kiddie menu. But I am grown-up. I can look at a real menu instead of a kiddie menu.”

I ask: “Does that bother you?”

“Sometimes.”

I continue asking: “What do you say?”

“I say, ‘Excuse me. Can I get another menu?’ Maybe they think I am 6 years old.”

My next question: “Do you think it’s because you have Down syndrome?”

“They don’t know I have Down syndrome.”

“Rachel, what is your understanding of Down syndrome?”

“It is great to be Down syndrome, because I have other friends with Down syndrome. I made friends in school and in other places with Down syndrome people.”

Yes, indeed, Rachel has Down syndrome, and that’s why she is what the rest of us can only flail at life to become, struggling to match her gentle nature.

Maybe God made Rachel Goldbaum to tell us something.

Fred Dickey of Cardiff is a novelist and award-winning magazine writer who believes every life is an adventure. He welcomes column ideas and other suggestions; contact him at freddickey@roadrunner.com